Prototheora is a genus of moths. It is the only genus of the Prototheoridae, or the African primitive ghost moths, a family of insects in the lepidopteran order, contained in the superfamily Hepialoidea. These moths are endemic to Southern Africa.
Diversity and distribution Members of the genus Prototheora are found in South Africa (Kristensen, 1999: 60; Nielsen et al., 2000), Angola (Prototheora angolae) and the Mulanje Massif of Malawi (Davis, 2001). See also revisions by Janse (1942) and Davis (1996).
List of species Prototheora parachlora (Meyrick, 1919) (originally in Metatheora) =Prototheora paraglossa; Janse, 1942 Prototheora petrosema Meyrick, 1917 Prototheora monoglossa Meyrick, 1924 Prototheora corvifera (Meyrick, 1920) (originally in Metatheora) Prototheora merga Davis, 1996 Prototheora quadricornis Meyrick, 1920 Prototheora biserrata Davis, 1996 Prototheora serruligera Meyrick, 1920 Prototheora cooperi Janse, 1942 Prototheora geniculata Davis, 1996 Prototheora drackensbergae Davis, 1996 Prototheora angolae Davis, 1996 Prototheora malawiensis Davis, 2001
References
Davis, D.R. (1996). A revision of the southern African family Prototheoridae (Lepidoptera: Hepialoidea). Entomologica Scandinavica, 27: 393-439. Davis, D.R. (2001). A new species of Prototheora from Malawi, with additional notes on the distribution and morphology of the genus (Lepidoptera: Prototheoridae). Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington: 103(2): 452-456.Abstract Janse, A.J.T. (1942). The moths of South Africa. Volume IV, part 1. Jugatae 78 pp. Kristensen, N.P. (1999) . The non-Glossatan Moths. Ch. 4, pp. 41–62 in Kristensen, N.P. (Ed.). Lepidoptera, Moths and Butterflies. Volume 1: Evolution, Systematics, and Biogeography. Handbook of Zoology. A Natural History of the phyla of the Animal Kingdom. Band / Volume IV Arthropoda: Insecta Teilband / Part 35: 491 pp. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York. Nielsen, E.S., Robinson, G.S. and Wagner, D.L. 2000. Ghost-moths of the world: a global inventory and bibliography of the Exoporia (Mnesarchaeoidea and Hepialoidea) (Lepidoptera) Journal of Natural History, 34(6): 823-878.Abstract
Sources Common Name Index
External links
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